London events in June

Her unibrowed face has been plastered over everything from tattoos to fridge magnets. Now, London's getting a rare chance to get to know the towering artistic talent behind the kitschy merch, with the first major Frida Kahlo exhibition in eight years. The Tate Modern's massive summer exhibition will feature over 130 of her works alongside documents, photographs and memorabilia taken from Kahlo’s archives. It'll explore how she created the images that captured so many people's imaginations, as well as looking at the fans that spread her image all over the world.

A World Cup summer is right around the corner, and we’re gearing up for loads more thrills, spills, beer-soaked highs and crushing disappointments. This year, 16 stadiums across Canada, Mexico and the United States will host this epic tournament, which plays out from Thursday June 11 - Sunday July 19 2026.

The Three Lions and the Lionesses have made it all the way to the final in the last four consecutive international tournaments, and with elite coach Thomas Tuchel now managing the boys, England fans will be praying it’s finally time to end their 58 years of hurt. Scotland, meanwhile, while be aiming to make it out of the group stages in their first World Cup in 28 years. 

Practically every pub and bar in London will be getting in on the action and vying for your attendance during the World Cup’s biggest games. So we’ve whittled it down to the places that offer the best atmosphere and the best view of the screen, wherever you station yourself...

As the sun goes down this summer, explore after hours at London Zoo for an unmissable evening, that's just for adults. From 6 pm every Friday evening in June and July, guests are invited to come and see the Zoo in a different light, without the kids around.

Explore a world of wildlife in the heart of the city with talks, games and over 8,500 amazing animals. After you’ve worked up an appetite, discover the street food market serving up fantastic flavours from across the globe, with plenty of choice for herbivores and carnivores. Then grab a drink from one of the watering holes or the cocktail garden and chill out surrounded by relaxing music.

Get tickets, through Time Out Offers

Marilyn Monroe would have been 100 this year. So National Portrait Gallery is throwing an arty party in her honour, gathering together hundreds of images of the Hollywood legend. This exhibition will showcase works by some of the twentieth century’s greatest artists and photographers, including Andy Warhol, Cecil Beaton, Marlene Dumas, Milton Greene and Eve Arnold. And you'll also get to peek at scripts, books, and even clothes owned by the legend herself.

A stated part of Indhu Rubasingham’s plan as the new artistic director of the National Theatre is to shake up the smaller Dorfman a little, and here’s the first fruit of that policy, as Matthew Warchus directs Stephen Beresford’s adaptation of their own acclaimed 2014 film. Based on a true story and real characters, Pride tells the story of the solidarity the British LGBT community offered the striking miners in the ’80s, with the story revolving around yoiung gay activist Mark Ashton, who brokered the unlikely alliance. The film is a modern queer classic and it’s exciting that this musical comes from the team who made it, including Warchus, a very seasoned director of musicals. A fine ensemble cast includes Samuel Barnett and Chris Jenkins. 

Hold onto your napkins; we’ve just announced Time Out’s number one restaurant in London.

Every year we crown a new restaurant as our favourite, as well as releasing a fully updated list of the 50 best places to eat in the capital. 

After much deliberation and much eating, in 2026 we’re pleased to put our arteries on the line to crown Camille in Borough Market as our new number one restaurant in London. 

Opened in 2024 in Borough Market, it’s a French bistro with head chef Elliot Hashtroudi in the driving seat. Our most recent, five star review, called it ‘a triumph of imagination, talent, and guts’. Expect plenty of offal (Hashtroudi learned his way around a carcass at St John) fabulous fish dishes, and a daily specials board brimming with French country classics. 

Read our full review of the restaurant here, and then book yourself in stat. 

BST will be back again next summer, bringing some of the world’s biggest pop stars to Hyde Park for its 13th edition. Already announced as headliners for 2026 are Lewis Capaldi, Pitbull and Garth Brooks, with more to be confirmed. Taking place across weekends in June and July, Hyde Park will host an upmarket festival vibe complete with food, drink and a posh VIP area.

And there are also a number of free community events taking place throughout the weeks as part of the BST Open House series. These usually include things like Wimbledon screenings, an outdoor cinema, outdoor theatre shows, DJ sets and gigs.

The Open Air Theatre started out life as a Shakespeare only venue. These days you're more likely to find musicals on its tree-framed stage, but all that's changing with a summery staging of the Bard’s ultimate crowd-pleaser, as directed by Atri Banerjee. We’ve no massive steer for how this one will play out, but it’s described as ‘blissful’, indicating it’s probably not going to do anything too outre, and it’ll have an original folk-infused score from Maimuna Memon.

Tucked inside the five-star Andaz London Liverpool Street by Hyatt, the Oak Room is one of London’s most intimate and atmospheric hidden spaces. Between May and October, award-winning magician Tony Middleton ‘Sonic’ invites audiences to a series of exclusive drawing room performances, exploring sleight of hand, mind-reading and feats that seem impossible.

With 12 years of The Magic Hour under his belt, Middleton is a master of close-up and parlour magic — and this new show promises something darker, more secretive and utterly spellbinding. It’s a rare chance to experience magic up close in one of the city’s most elusive and atmospheric venues. 

Get 30% off tickets, only through Time Out Offers

A few years back, wildly popular French playwright Florian Zeller (‘The Father’, ‘The Mother’) had his plays plastered all over the West End. If you missed his work the first time round, here's your chance to find out what all the fuss was about. This zippy, witty farce explores the ever-shifting layers of infidelity as experienced by two middle-aged Parisian couples, with lots of laughs with painful truths behind them.

Is it art, or is it maths? It’s a question even MC Escher himself couldn’t answer about his own work. While the Dutch printmaker known for his infinite staircases, metamorphosing tessellations and paradoxical buildings was rejected by the art world, he was revered by mathematicians, and is now one of the most famous optical illusionists of all time. 

The OG creator of images that make you go ‘Huh?’ is going under the microscope in London with a blockbuster exhibition celebrating his life and work this summer. Created by Italian company Arthemisia and the immersive peeps at Fever, MC Escher: The Exhibition has arrived at Somerset House as part of its world tour. If you are a gaga for geometry, are fascinated by fractals, or just have a penchant for the psychedelic, you will find plenty to be engrossed by here. 

From swanky skyscrapers to casual warehouse hangouts and hidden pub terraces, London has a real crush on a rooftop bar. Here's our pick of the best places to enjoy a natural high along with your bevvies, from Soho to Peckham to Shoreditch. 

In our age of mind-boggling CGI and AI-optimised everything, it’s easy to forget how much pleasure can be had from the simple optical tricks of mirrors and lights. But not for Julio Le Parc. A key figure of the Kinetic and Op Art movements of the 1960s, the pioneering Argentinian artist has been making illuminated, kinetic and participatory works for seven decades, and is still making art at the ripe old age of 97. This major retrospective celebrates his visionary seven-decade career, spanning from from his arrival in Paris in the late 1950s to his resurgence in the 2010s, with over 60 colourful, immersive (and extremely Instagrammable) works.

In a grimly timely stage adaptation of a major Iranian work, Nadia Latif directs Carmen Nasr’s adaoptation of Babak Anvari’s Bafta-winning horror film. Under the Shadow is set in ’80s Tehran, at the height of the Iran-Iraq War, and follows a mother and her daughter who are haunted by a mysterious entity after they refuse to evacuate the city, with Leila Farzad starring in the lead role of mother Shideh. Stage horror has been having a terrific run of late; this is a powerful and unsettling cult classic that deserves more attention.

This glossy Frank Sinatra bio-musical may have had its original try-out run in Birmingham last year, but Sinatra the Musical follows the increasingly common path of a big new American show working its kinks through in the more forgiving UK before chancing Broadway.

A much bigger deal than those Ratpack concert musical things that have done the rounds before, it’s a big glossy affair. Directed and choregraphed by Broadway big name Kathleen Marshall, and with a book by Broadway big name Joe DiPietro, this is a production stacked with talent, and sounds like it’s going to tell a 'proper’ story, honing in on a piviotal concert on New Year’s Eve 1942 as a 27-year-old Frank tries to turn around a career – and personal life – that seems to be on the rocks. Brit actor Joel Harper-Jackson will play Frank.

With its real life spacecraft and other impressive extraterrestrial paraphernalia, Science Museum is about as close as you can get to going to actual space within walking distance of the Piccadilly line. And your proximity to the cosmos is about to increase a heck of a lot with the arrival of this 40-minute free-roaming VR experience, which will take you into the deepest and most spectacular parts of the galaxy.

Recently debuted in Washington DC, and developed in tandem with the US’s flagship Smithsonian Museum and its Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, the Science Museum’s latest attraction has some real scientific credentials, so while the literally otherworldly scenes of space you find yourself stepping into are digitally crafted, they’re meticulously crafted on the backs of decades of real scientific data, rather than just AI slop. 

Your journey starts off with a tour of our world’s observatories before heading up to the Hubble Space Telescope… and then far beyond. Diving headlong into the cosmos – we’re told you will ‘witness the birth and death of stars, explore distant galaxies, and come face-to-face with a black hole’. Just don’t go falling in.

If you thought Jamie Lloyd’s hipster, prosthetics-free production of Edmund Rostand’s classic play had killed off the classic big-nosed take on Cyrano de Bergerac, you’d be very wrong. Nonetheless, to suggest this RSC production from director Simon Evans just an old school trad take would be off the mark. Co-adapted with writer and poet Debris Stevenson, it won glowing reviews in Stratford-upon-Avon for its bitter intensity and moreover for superb lead performances from Adrian Lester as the dazzlingly witty but physically ugly soldier Cyrano, and the wonderful Susannah Fielding as his love Roxane, unaware that the poetic letters purportedly sent to her by her hunky suitor Christian are in fact written by Cyrano.

Understand the history of HIV and the major global health challenge it still poses in the world today through stories of protest and care, photography, film and archival material in this new Wellcome Collection display. Across two rooms, Tenderness & Rage will explore the UK’s 1980-90s AIDS epidemic, contemporary experiences of HIV in the Global South and reveal how activist groups and volunteer-led organisations have supported and campaigned for those living with HIV. It will also spotlight the much-overlooked experience of women living with HIV in the UK and globally.

The Royal Academy’s first Summer Exhibition opened in 1769. That was the same year that Captain James Cook began his first voyage to the Pacific. In other words, this open-submission exhibition has been around for a very long time. This year, British sculptor Ryan Gander is at the helm, working under the broad curatorial theme of ‘Interconnectness’. Which is just as well, given there are nearly 2,000 works that he’s chosen to fill the galleries of the London institution.

The result is that there really is something here for everyone. Paintings, sculptures, paintings of sculptures, and sculptures of paintings,The Summer Exhibition rewards patience, not efficiency. Give yourself time to wander as if you do, somewhere among the thousands of works you may discover your new favourite artist.

South London’s beloved anthropological museum is going big with the birthday celebrations this year. To mark its 125th anniversary, the Horniman is hosting a series of fun-packed, family-friendly events completely free of charge this June. 

Visitors can flock between three stages hosting local and young musicians, DJs and musical storytelling for youngsters, take part in craft workshops, and sample street food from an array of vendors, as well as checking out the new ‘Animals Everywhere’ AR trail, which allows you to interact with a series of 3D-animated creatures around the museum, including the Horniman’s most iconic resident, the overstuffed walrus. 

Tickets are free but are being snapped up fast – grab yours  here before they’re gone!

Ever watched Finding Nemo or Inside Out and wondered what it would be like to exist inside those marvelous worlds created by Pixar animation studio? Well, wonder no more – the Mundo Pixar Experience is a travelling immersive show that has been transporting Pixar fans to some of its most beloved universes. And this year, it‘s coming to London. The show essentially a journey through a series of 14 rooms, one dedicated to a different Pixar film. You shrink down to toy size in Andy’s Room from Toy Story, explore the Monster, Inc Scare Floor, race into Flo’s Café from Cars to meet Lightning McQueen, visit the Headquarters of Riley’s emotions from Inside Out 2, and journey from Coco’s Land of the Living to the Land of the Dead. To make the experience all the more ‘immersive’ there will be ‘specially crafted scents’ filling each space. 

Hollywood star Sandra Oh is a very good get indeed for the National Theatre, as she takes on the title role in NT boss Indhu Rubasingham’s revival of Moliére’s The Misanthrope. The adaptation is by the veteran playwright Martin Crimp, in a latest iteration of a version that first debuted in 1996. Previously the title character was Alceste, a male playwright who alienates himself from wider society after he starts to tell the truth about how corrupt and venal it all is – Damian Lewis took it on in the 2009 revival, opposite Kiera Knightley as rising starlet Jennifer. All we really know about Crimp’s latest update is that Oh will here play a novelist named Alice, with Paul Chahidi and Abigail Cruttenden co-starring opposite the Killing Eve star.

There are few better ways to make the most of a sunny (or even just slightly warm) afternoon in London than by spending it in a beer garden. Drinking cold pints (or spritzes, or white wine with a couple of ice cubes) with your mates feels good anywhere, but there’s something seriously special about pints under London’s skies. Our top picks include the gardens at the Fultering Fullback, the Duke of Edinburgh, the White Swan and the Bank of Friendships. 

Steven Spielberg has created some of the most epic movies of our time. He gave us the magnificent shot of the bikes floating in front of the moon in E.T., the insanely tense shot of the shark fin poking out of the water in Jaws and the magical first reveal of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. In May and June, Spielberg superfans will get the opportunity to experience those legendary scenes and more at the BFI IMAX. The special programme is to mark the release of Disclosure Day, the director’s latest sci-fi blockbuster. It’ll include screenings of Jaws (May 31), E.T. the Extra Terrestrial (June 7), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (June 14), Ready Player One (June 21) and Jurassic Park (June 28) alongside nature documentaries Shark Kingdom 3D and Dinosaurs of Antarctica 3D, introduced by wildlife and natural history experts. 

Has it really been 30 years? An animation that tapped into our childhood nostalgia right from the get-go back in 1995, a new Toy Story movie now feels like a time machine back to the time we first watched a Toy Story movie – a kind of meta-nostalgia there’s definitely a German word for. Poor Woody has a bald spot and a paunch now – although of the original gang only Woody seems to have aged. And us. 

Wisely, the pacy and imaginative Toy Story 5 leans into the same tensions that fuelled those first three films: the fear of being outgrown and left behind, and the peace that comes from accepting when it’s time to let go. It’s a real joy to be back in this delightful world, with its golly-gee Randy Newman anthems, its celebration of the eccentric, odd and plain doolally, and its big heart. Barbie made us feel empathy for one toy; this film does it for a dozen. 

This deeply unsettling, nauseatingly intense debut play from Georgie Dettmer is 65 minutes and 52 scenes long, and you probably can’t take much more. 

The vignette-based style of drama is a tricky thing to carry off, and it’s generally only later-career writers (your Caryl Churchills, your Tony Kushners) who have scored any meaningful success with the form. And it’s perhaps not apparent for the first third or so that Dettmer’s play will actually cohere. A cluster of storylines about the intersection of web-age voyeurism, female sexuality and male violence, Are You Watching? has an implacable momentum twinned with immaculately icy production from director Jess Edwards, in which every micro-scene is coldly delineated with the sound of a shutter, and in which the piteous cumulative impact of the horrors contained within outweighs the need for neat endings or a direct moral address.

This is a terrific debut play, wonderfully directed, and with a great, hard-working cast. As disturbing an hour of theatre as you’ll see on the London stage.